INTIFADACIDE:

In the ruins of the 'intifadah': After 2 years: Death, more poverty. "We didn't achieve anything," an Arab
says. (Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, Sep. 28, 2002, Knight Ridder News Service)

Whether here, where Yasir Arafat is under siege; in Gaza, where 12-year-old Mohammed al Durah took one of its first bullets; or at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, where it began two years ago, the intifadah, Palestinians say, is sputtering. [...]

This weekend, as the Al-Aqsa intifadah, or uprising, begins its third year, popular resistance against Israel has faded. Ayosh Junction, once the front line of the intifadah, is deserted. No more do legions of Palestinians march in the streets with posters of their leaders, shouting slogans of martyrdom and the conquest of Al-Quds, as Arabs refer to Jerusalem.

What is left are a besieged Palestinian government, led by Arafat, that says it will continue to resist until Israel withdraws from Palestinian territories, and terrorist cells that continue to launch attacks against Israeli civilians that make Israeli withdrawal impossible.

Many Palestinians are bitter, having achieved only abject poverty, detention in Israeli jails, injury and death in the uprising. Israeli troops are firmly in control of most of the West Bank and lead daily attacks in the Gaza Strip to destroy militant cells that are still fighting the war. Western and Arab nations have largely lost interest in helping Arafat's government. Cynicism has grown to a point that many reform-minded Palestinians say privately that Arafat promoted the intifadah less to defeat Israel than to deflect domestic discontent over graft and corruption within the Palestinian Authority.

It's common enough these days for our political leadership to talk about the permanence of the war on terror and how terrorism is something we just have to get used to. But just as the Brits have defeated the IRA and the Palestinian terror movement appears to be losing steam, it seems possible that by refusing to meet the political demands of the terrorists and by meeting their violence with an unyielding resistance and a willingness to wield violence ourselves, it seems probable that we can at least deprive the radical Islamicists of their popular support, and thereby defeat them. It's really surprisingly easy to imagine the day when the attitudes of the Palestinian people, as reflected in this article--the bitterness toward their leaders; the sense of having been duped; the demands for reform--will prevail across the Middle East. That is, if we keep up the pressure and continue to hold out the prospect of a democratic revolution. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 29, 2002 9:16 AM